Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
$33.00 Inc GST
The astonishing new novel from two-time National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward
‘Leaves you in awe of the human capacity to not only endure, but to ascend back to the light … Spectacular’
ANTHONY DOERR, author of All the Light We Cannot See
‘A stunning achievement. Will grip you from the first word to the last’
NATHAN HARRIS, author of The Sweetness of Water
Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.
Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.
From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land – the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.
About the Author: Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing, and is the winner of two National Book Awards for Fiction for both Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones. She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.
24 Oct 2023
Additional information
Format | Paperback / softback |
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Genre | Historical fiction |
Readership Level | General (US: Trade) |
ISBN | 9781526666727 |
Publication Date | 24 Oct 2023 |
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward ISBN 9781526666727